Sprout Magazine

Rock Star Digital Music Freakouts Ignore Benefit to Everyone Else

David Byrne, the latest rock star to fight the tide of small screens from the Jumbotron. (original photo CC-BY-SA Jason Lam)

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

It’s the latest fad: rock stars hating digital music. Well, not really — it started with Napster. Back then, a lot of artists held their tongues, realizing that it would be mega-uncool to call their fans thieves just for being fans. Plus, the major labels had screwed them repeatedly, and it was schadenfreude to see them suffer because of their own greed and ineptitude.

Flash forward over a decade, and the labels have figured out how to continue to profit from gatekeeping access to the world’s music. Sure, they’ve seen their market share slip versus the indies, and now only own the rights to around 70% of recorded music. But they’ve once again managed to control the means of mass distribution, this time by dictating the terms of digital music streaming services so that they could not exist without the majors, legal or financially. (I’s also the reason why streaming royalty payouts are so low for most artists — the major labels, as always, take the lion’s share.)

The rock stars realize they’re being screwed again by the majors (what did they expect?) David Byrne is the latest to pile on While many famous musicians point the finger at tech companies ad exploiters du jour, Byrne’s piece rightly acknowledges the majors are culpable for setting the terms of streaming music. Nonetheless, he speaks in concert with many other high profile artists when he blames digital distribution of music for destroying music, saying “The internet will suck all creative content out of the world”. I respect Byrne as a musician and a well-spoken, well-written, thoughtful musical provocateur, but this is too much.

Most of the complaining is just reactionary vitriol, the same way journalists deride blogging, or photographers bellyache about Instagram. There were probably some pretty pissed off monastic scribes when the printing press came out.

The problem with creative professionals complaining about changes brought about by technology is that they’re focusing only on their careers. I don’t blame ’em. Only those with a laser-like career focus can find any long-term success in the creative industries. As it relates specifically to the music industry, I never would have expected vaudeville performers to welcome recorded music, or for Tin Pan Alley to welcome radio, or for the record and radio busiensses to welcome digital.

When rock stars and professionals make the digital music debate all about their paychecks, they not only pass culpability from the major labels that deserve it to the technology companies that enable freer access to music. Tragically, when music professionals make grandiose statements about how digital is killing music, they measure the decline only in the dollar amount of their paycheck, and they denigrate music in the same way the major labels do. They reduce one of humankind’s greatest evolutionary and expressive triumphs to mere profit, and they fail to ignore the benefit of digital music to everyone else.

Put simply, more music is being made and listened to than ever before. Digital music combines the best of recording (accessibility to high-quality music performances) with the best of radio (free access). It’s the best thing to ever happen for fans — and make no mistake, fans control the music industry, though more often than not they may not realize it.

There is no doubt the professional musician is on the decline, which is bittersweet. Most career musicians are working-class survivors, a group of ~50,000 musicians in the U.S. who have fought their way tooth-and-nail to profitability. Only a fraction enjoy profitable careers lasting more than a few years. A generally non-vocal majority of professional musicians are busy adapting to the changing market, but a handful of very vocal complainers are raising an awful stink about their shrinking paychecks. Again, I don’t blame them for being protective of their livelihoods — but look what good paywalling did for newspapers/journalists. Successful pro photographers found out ways to embrace Instagram, not fight it.

My biggest gripe with the anti-free access to music, professional musician mentality is that what little time it spends focusing on solutions, those solutions belie any understanding of the change that has already taken place, and ignore those who aren’t professional musicians — namely, the tens of millions of music fans that make their paychecks possible.

It’s absurd how many artists, Byrne included, just complain. At least crusaders like David Lowery are trying to articulate solutions, though they often reduce to useless catch phrases like “stop artist exploitation” or “piracy is stealing”. What is all this doing except making professional musicians look like entitled, out-of-touch geezers to their fans?

The other troubling development is that these activist musicians end up bolstering the exploitation-based business built by major labels, by virtue of the fact that major labels control the market. Every dollar musicians fight to earn back by more strictly enforcing copyright law is $99 that goes into the pockets of the labels. Even the labels are finally realizing after 125 years of fighting piracy, that the War on Piracy is like the War on Drugs or the War on Terrorism. To the extent that battles can be won, the cost of doing so — both financial and in the hearts and minds of fans — is unsustainable.

What these money-focused musicians miss is so obvious: it’s not about the money. As Henry Rollins said, “I’d rather be heard than paid.” This is not something that only professional musicians feel. Every musician feels this. Even fans feel this. And I think what every professional musician needs to realize is that their careers are transforming because digital technology awakens the musician in all of us. Music professionals no longer enjoy a monopoly on the title of “musician.”

Free access to music empowers the amateur and the aspiring musician to earn income on scales that were not possible before. It reverses the trend of music without context — instead of digital files floating around in the cloud, creators are now compelled to create imagery, video, and other media around the music, enriching the fan experience.

Free access to music is blurring the line between fan and musician, creating a new culture of creator-consumers, remixing and mashing up several generations of recordings to create a new art form. They curate playlists to become the new DJs. They sample at will to electronically create entirely original compositions with embedded links to music history.

Free access to music rebalances the world of music more toward performances, away from the hegemony of the recording. In a post-scarcity economy, copies of performances lose value, original performances gain value. This rewards the generation of new music without having to rely on messy copyright law. EDM is explosively huge, and so much of it exists outside the copyright exploitation paradigm.

Free access to music allows musicians to focus on what’s really important: their relationship with their fans. Gone are the days when fans were measured in dollar amounts. Success in music is now measured in attention, in engagement.

Free access to music de-emphasizes the ethically compromised business model of copyright exploitation in favor of direct fan patronage. It may not scale to gold records, but the only people that seem to care are the rock stars, and those that still believe in the rock star myth. And if you’re hell-bent on copyright exploitation as your main source of revenue, there are plenty of academic studies showing free access to music increases sales of access to music.

I get that it’s counterintuitive — especially for professional musicians — to see their disappearing careers as a good thing. But it is. You just have to consider that music is bigger than the ~50,000 professional musicians in the U.S. There are fifty times as many musicians creating music right now for no money, and waving it all away as crappy music is a defense mechanism. They are finding their audiences. They are supplementing their income and breaking even. They are being heard even if they aren’t being paid. And if they’re really good composers, performers, recording artists and entrepreneurs, they are getting more chances to be heard, more chances to build a career.

There is no doubt that free access to music is inevitable — if not here already — and will continue to be the major force in reshaping music. To the detractors and complainers, I’m afraid the question of whether that’s a net benefit to humanity has already been settled. The fans have spoken. They want the music back.

6 Comments

An interesting read and some good points. But overall I find it rather short sighted. Whilst you may like the fact that the consumers, fans and the everyday man can now create music in their bedrooms and release it to the masses; i however find this a scary thought. I am an audio engineer/producer and what I have noticed in the last ten years is a declining musical ability. Because technology has advanced so much (in both good and bad ways for music) it means that I know people who have no musical bone in their body but yet are trying to release “hit” records. Singers are becoming more lazy and not practicing their craft and instead relying heavily on editing and processing to make it sound good. I have noticed that recording sessions these days are taking far less time because the artists just want to do a few sloppy takes and then fix it in the mix. A lot of the reason for this is that people arent thinking about trying to become career musicians because they know they lifespan of artists these days are so short. It means they dont put in the time and energy to craft their skill because the long term pay offs arent worth it. So instead they rely on editing and processing to correct their performance and in the long term the music industry suffers because of an excessive amount of unskilled performers. Now I know that this is off topic from paying for music, but it leads me to my main point….

The talented artists, the ones that have spent thousands of hours practicing their crafts and touring the world, the artists that you have loved since you were kids…..no im not talking about the ones that sell out stadiums and are in the 1% of musicians….im talking about the less popular but deeply loved acts. These acts stop making music because they cant afford to any more. Their main goal is not to make money and the music always comes first….but they need to make money to feed their families. These acts stop releasing music because its no longer feasible. Sure they tour, but the tours become longer because recorded music no longer puts food on their tables, so they tour all year long….they are away from their families for more time than they are home because its all they know how to do. These ar the talented artists that we miss when they are gone, the ones that we are always saying “man I hope they bring out some new music, they used to bring out an album every other year but now they havent released anything for 5 years….). This is the situation that causes me to hate the fact that people are listening to their music for free. I know that if people were still paying for recorded music; then I would be hearing more music from my favourite bands….and no, its not because they are doing it for the money. But why would bands spend 20k on recording new music when people just take it for free?

I still by records every single week and will always support the talented artists who have worked on their craft. There are too many bands that I love that can no longer justify touring the world for 200 days of the year and can no longer justify spending 20k on an album when only 2,000 people will buy a copy. If you are ok with the practiced and talented artists not releasing more great music then it just means that more of the talentless 20 somethings are going to flood the market with their bedroom music.

A final note. No, artists should not be releasing music for their fans, this is the problem with a lot of modern music; they are writing to please their audiences instead of writing to release a creative expression. You might be fine with just listening to souless jams that please the masses; but I for one hope that the talented smaller artists who actually live and breathe music can continue to release music every other year instead of just constantly touring the world and live away from their families. Just my opinion, but I will always support the artists that I want to hear more of and will never lie to myself with some false justification of why I am ripping off my favourite songwriters and musicians

“you may like the fact that the consumers, fans and the everyday man can now create music in their bedrooms and release it to the masses; i however find this a scary thought.”

Right here you are only possibly be writing in your own self-interest. You’re entitled to your opinion, but it doesn’t invalidate what millions of people are doing. This attitude scares me.

OK, then you talk about how music is subjectively worse for you because it’s more efficient to produce. That’s an entirely subjective aesthetic assessment by you, the person who grew up listening to big budget studio albums. Your “clueless jams that please the masses” are my greatest hits. It’s all subjective. Nobody under the age of 20 cares (I’m 33). If the tradeoff to everyone getting to participate in music culture is lower fidelity, simpler recording techniques, so be it. Just don’t hold the kids back for what you can’t hear with your ears or feel with your soul.

At the end, your comment ends up in that same tired place: free access to music is bad for music and/or musicians. It’s just not true. It’s bad for 25K of the 50K pro musicians in the US, the half that refuse to adapt to what is already reality. Hundreds of thousands of amateur and aspiring artists are coming out of the woodwork. The pro music career as we know it is gone. A new model has evolved to take its place. Musicians are still struggling to come to terms.

People who reduce this all down to “the kids are listening to free music and it’s killing great music” really need to take a good hard look at what is really happening, instead of reacting in this kneejerk, dismissive way. More music. More artists. More participation… it’s all headed in the right direction.

Zac, i think the bigger issue that should be focused upon, is the re-monetization of music.The dream of the ‘big recording contract’ is dead, but so are the days when a band would get signed to a seemingly lucrative deal, only to find themselves hugely in debt after the 1st year of touring. There are definite pluses and minuses to industry and culture change, but the majority of us now struggle to find ways to survive as creators/performers of music, including previously highly successful acts. Many big names artists have a myriad of side projects and other businesses/jobs, because music simply doesn’t pay out anymore (candy-coated, manufactured pop artists aside). The fact is, someone creating music part-time in their basement, as a hobby or side project, or wnvr they have time off from their full-time ‘real’ job, is unlikely to produce the next big hit. All opinions aside about which generations had better music, whether fidelity defines quality, whether there is any specific formula to creating great music, becoming a great musician takes sacrifice (time, energy, $$, family etc etc), and real creative talent….and not everyone is cut out to do it. For those who are, there must be some financial reward at the end of the day (like any other profession), or the sacrifice isn’t justified. All arguments aside about the unethical practice of stealing someone’s creation/work, unless new avenues of income are generated to offset the ‘free music’ paradigm, I weep for a future in which the only ppl creating music, are part-time enthusiasts, or musicians living in the street. Before you attack me for that statement Zac, consider this. Without the promise of financial reward and recognition, how many doctors do you think there would be in the world? How many kids would pick up a guitar and sit for hrs a day, every day for yrs, without the dream of ‘rock stardom’ for incentive? It may be a romantic notion to think of Bob Dylan living on ppls couches for yrs, as he travelled from one dingy NY underground bar to another to spread his political views, however, would even he have endured this life without the faint promise of financial reward in his eyes? Maybe, but how many Bob Dylans’ are out there?

“If the tradeoff to everyone getting to participate in music culture is lower fidelity, simpler recording techniques, so be it.”

What culture are you referring to? Music is ingrained in our souls. It will never die, even with music programs being slashed in schools. Ppl have always participated in music culture, but there is a big difference between participating on an amateur level, and being a pro at something. The aspect of music culture that’s closed off to most, is the fame and fortune, and that will remain closed no matter what paradigm shifts occur.

“More music. More artists. More participation… it’s all headed in the right direction.”

What direction exactly is that? If the music industry re-organizes itself in such a way that musicians will be lucky to earn even a modest income from practising their art, the art will suffer. Lo-fi is simply not as pleasing to the ear as hi-fi. That’s not a subjective statement, its fact. I beg to differ that ‘nobody under the age of 20 cares’. The airwaves are jammed with oldies rock stations….more and more <20 kids are playing tired old classic rock songs and trying to recreate the sounds of big processed bands (no one would record in lo-fi if they had a choice, or knew that a choice existed).

These kids do all this because they dream of stardom (= fame + fortune). Just to be heard?? Fame without fortune? A platform on which to be heard, but no food on the table? Is that a sustainable model? Doubtful

Is it your contention that market saturation is a good thing? Hundreds of thousands of amateur and aspiring artists are coming out of the woodwork….and fighting with each other to be heard, and even to find a place to perform at. Bars aren't paying bands anymore, because bands will play for free. Ppl download music for free, and bands have to offer merch for free as incentive for music fans just to listen to them, because there is so much 'music' online these days. In other words, the prospect of losing all your $$ trying to be a musician, has never been stronger.

Is this your idea of the right direction? This new model you refer to, has not even begun evolving.

"People who reduce this all down to “the kids are listening to free music and it’s killing great music” really need to take a good hard look at what is really happening…. – Please, enlighten me!

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to focus on the re-monetization of music. That’s one of my main missions in life. It’s why I started the website Songhack (http://www.songhack.com) and why I created a free course teaching musicians how to make money (http://www.udemy.com/bandasbusiness). I could go on all day about the ways we’re monetizing music, new and old, in a post-scarcity marketplace with free access to music. I’ll try to keep it brief:

I agree you here: “The fact is, someone creating music part-time in their basement, as a hobby or side project, or wnvr they have time off from their full-time ‘real’ job, is unlikely to produce the next big hit.”

What I’m looking forward to is ending the hegemony of “the hit”. Instead of artists needing to be Bob Dylan to have a sustainable music career, you can be Joe Blow Punk Band, and if you’ve got 1,000 true fans, you know how to manage your band like a small business, and you work hard at doing everything you can to monetize, today it’s possible to have a sustainable music career doing just that.

The problem I see is not in re-monetization. Painting musicians as “victims” of “piracy” is just as absurd as calling journalists victims of blogging. It ups everyone’s game. Musicians can no longer rely on exploitation of their copyright by labels and publishers. It’s a reality brought on by technology. It’s not going away. So it forces not just musicians, but also the industry, to innovate new ways of engaging fans and earning money. It’s going to be rocky for a few years, but we’re already seeing the explosive growth in crowdfunding and resurgence of live music (yes, the dreaded “touring and T-shirts” that have always been my bread & butter as a musician, but I guess I don’t count because I’m not putting my kids through college on a hit I wrote back in 1978). The re-monetization is happening, it’s just that old pro musicians are missing it or ingnoring it.

The problem I see is a lack of education among musicians. That “rock star” dream you talk about creating a generation of musicians created a generation of broke musicians who abandoned their dreams. Musicians of the “rock star” era were separated from the music industry with a vast art/business divide. It was uncool to mix the two. As a result, not only did nearly all musicians go broke and quit, but those who were able to scrape together a living did so being exploited by labels and publishers who saw the vast majority of the financial benefit.

Today, musicians are learning how to be entrepreneurs. They’re learning how to manage and book their own bands, to record and license their own music, etc. How can we knock them for doing so? It doesn’t mean they’ll replace managers and studios and publishers. What it does mean is that if they want to scale their business to a few thousand fans, they now have the knowledge and tools to do that. Most musicians always have had to find ways to supplement their income with complimentary skills like graphic design, PR, web design, bartending, whatever… now these musicians have the tools to work a little less at the day job, and a little more on the dream job. If they want to press on and become professional musicians and work with “a team”, they’ve now learned the trade from the inside out and can make better and less exploitative decisions.

I hear what you’re saying about lo-fi vs. hi-fi, I can’t disagree with the points you made, but I think you’re focusing your attention on the wrong comparison. The quality of “lo-fi” is getting higher and higher, while “hi-fi” has sort of hit a ceiling, both in terms of succumbing to the “loudness wars” but also in terms of there not being any more budget to push the envelope. Lo-fi is not about sounding better, it’s about sounding good enough to go over well with fans. Fans’ tastes have adapted to take in more and more lo-fi music because they appreciate the niche sounds that would never have been produced 10 years ago because their business wouldn’t scale to the point where they could afford a studio recording. Fans want great compositions and performances — recordings are just a vessel. By de-emphasizing fidelity of recordings, we’re getting a greater variety, and arguably, a better overall quality of compositions and performances.

Looking back at your quote, the statement I most disagree with is: “the prospect of losing all your $$ trying to be a musician, has never been stronger.” I can see how this opinion is popular with professional musicians who put all their eggs into the exploiting copyright basket. But today’s successful bands are focused not on moving units, but making and engaging fans. The music industry is catching up to all the other industries that have been transformed by digital and adapted. This is how business is done in an attention economy. Those afraid of “market saturation” or being heard through the noise are just that… afraid. More competition means everyone has to up their game, everyone has to be GREAT in order to succeed. Everyone has to be their own little mini version of Bob Dylan for their niche of fans.

Finally, you take issue with my statement: “People who reduce this all down to “the kids are listening to free music and it’s killing great music” really need to take a good hard look at what is really happening….

Here’s the deal: phonographs killed live music, radio killed phonographs, CDs killed cassettes, digital killed CDs. Now phonographs are coming back, free streaming (same model as radio) is coming back… hell, even cassettes are being sold like never before, because they’re more hipster than vinyl. And people still want to buy CDs at shows because it’s a way to give a band money in person for digital files. What’s changed is where the power is concentrated. The majors are losing market share each year, the indies are gaining, and the unsigned artists now have the potential to survive as entrepreneurs.

“Great” music is always going to be subjective. It’s a safe bet that John Philip Sousa would have hated Miley Cyrus, that Bach would see mainstream pop as a cultural apocalypse, and David Byrne sees mashup culture as the death of musical creativity. Music doesn’t care. No matter how much we try and succeed in commodifying youth culture, music always finds a way. Music has not always been, as you suggest, as participatory as it is today. Listeners were consumers. Today, they are mashup artists, meme generators, remixers, parodists… digital technology enables them to be consumer-creators. Media is a semiotic democracy — we each create our own unique meaning from art as we experience it, so the next logical step is expressing that meaning. It’s what’s been happening with musicians since music began, and this is why I see a world of more music, more listening, and more musicians as a good thing. The economic considerations of labor-dessert theory that underlie copyright are anachronistic in the digital age. People still need copyright to protect their ability to profit from their work, but let’s not kid ourselves that some “rock star” myth is necessary to create a thriving music culture. The goal of copyright is also to benefit the social and cultural welfare, and more music that resonates with smaller niches of audiences accomplishes that goal far better than a one-size-fits-all hit-obsessed music industry.

The point of music is to bond us socially in shared spiritual, emotional and physical experience, not to make us money as individuals. Yes, money rules the world, so the evolution of music monetization is already underway. But it was never the driving force. I’d rather be heard than paid, wouldn’t you? Isn’t a chance to be heard a chance to be paid, not the other way around?

The writer of this article either supports himself from being paid to to do a job (yeah he’s exploited by the man blah blah) owns a business (he IS the man blah blah) or does nothing and lives off the benefits paid for by tax payers. It annoys me that he, like so many other plumbers, lawyers, bus drivers, hole diggers, car salesmen etc. would not lift a FINGER if they weren’t paid but insist that musicians should NOT be paid simply because they get a little pleasure from what they do.

He goes on to criticise record companies for exploiting musicians but thinks it is fine for ‘fans’ including himself to do so.

What he omits is that every other kind of intellectual copyright is next in line… every movie, every piece of software, every book, every magazine and even every physical object (which can be made on a 3D printer) can be pirated… It’s already happening!

Since manufacturing went to India, China etc. the western economies have been kept afloat by the production of great intellectually copyrighted IDEAS. If we continue to lose control of them, we will ALL starve… not just musicians. The writer is fiddling while Rome burns.

Never insisted musicians should not be paid, in fact I’ve dedicated my life to finding ways for musicians to make money in a world of free access to music. I don’t think you read much past the first few words. Check out my Band as Business course or go to Songhack and you’ll see the product of hundreds of hours of work to help musicians make money.

I’m not fiddling while Rome burns, I’m not too stupid to think we can fight the fire, it’s already out of our control. I’m building the new Rome and you’re gonna be burnt to a crisp.